


On The Nature and Fragility of Mortality

by Foxtrot (SolidState)



Series: Good Omens One-Offs [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Animal Death, Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ficlet, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mortality, godfathers crowley and aziraphale, human kids dealing with human things, non-graphic animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20685704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolidState/pseuds/Foxtrot
Summary: "Do cats go to heaven too, Aziraphale?"





	On The Nature and Fragility of Mortality

**Author's Note:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley help the Them through one of the most human experiences a child can face.

_"Do cats go to heaven too, Aziraphale?" _

  
In the afternoon on a particularly lovely bright day in early Autumn, Crowley and Aziraphale found themselves in Tadfield on the sort of visit one who realizes they really 'ought to stop by and say hello' to an old friend makes. It seemed that somehow everyone involved in this decidedly haphazard menagerie just knew when it had been the right time for a get together and inevitably Crowley's car would appear outside the cottage not a day after Anathema had the thought 'they'll be here soon'. The unexpected part of this routine was when Crowley and Aziraphale where met with a funeral in the little garden of Anathema's backyard.

  
Aziraphale started at the question as Pepper gazed up at him with wet cheeks and teary eyes and little furrowed brow. The slender body of an old ginger tomcat was laid out on a swath of linen in the grass, its copper eyes empty and unseeing of the four children gathered around it. Wensleydale gripped a fistful of his shirt as he stared hard at the ground sniffling a little, Brian held a little crumpled bundle of wildflowers in one hand and the other rested on Pepper's shoulder, Adam looked on with a decidedly dejected expression on his face as Dog sat quiet and reverently at his side.

  
Somewhere along the way it had become quite easy to forget that these where four children, not yet even 13 years old and three of them entirely human. Looking down into Pepper's round freckled face and mess of dark curls Aziraphale could so clearly recall the image of her holding his flaming sword at the End of the World, but now she was knelt in the grass and dirt looking every bit the little human child she was. Now she looked to Aziraphale with those wide hopeful eyes and asked of an angel;

  
"Do cat's go to heaven too, Aziraphale?"

  
Truth be told, he didn't really know. At least not entirely. Aziraphale had spent so much of his existence on Earth doing...well an awful lot of what he wasn't particularly supposed to be doing, which consisted of an awful lot of human things. Breathing life back into a dove was one thing, but this was another. Aziraphale had told many lies to many humans (and angels...and God) and many about what might happen to them after Death.The sorts of lies told to ease fear and pain and that Aziraphale told himself where OK to tell because it made the humans feel better. The thought of lying to these children now left a sharp unpleasant tang on his tongue, metallic and sweet like sucking on a greasy coin.

  
Instead, he softly brushed back the curls from her brow in the way a grandparent might when tucking a child in at bedtime and said "I am sorry, sweetheart. I don't have an answer for you" and though her lip quivered at that she didn't look disappointed with him and he continued on "I can tell you that there is peace and there is healing and there is time."

  
For a long moment Pepper watched Aziraphale, searching the blue of his eyes for something then smiled wobbly when she found whatever it had been she was looking for.

  
_Brave girl_

  
That afternoon, as Anathema, Newt, and Aziraphale busied in the kitchen with a lunch they'd hoped would be good enough for a funeral, Crowley had knelt in the grass beside four extraordinary children as they so very gently lowered the bundle of linen and wildflowers into a grave suitable for only the most beloved and grandest of cats. Had lifted the (too heavy for a 12 year old) stone picked out from the garden and situated it at the head of the little grave and let Pepper put her arms around his neck when her shoulders started to quake again, put one hand to her back and let her cry into his shoulder.

  
From the kitchen window Aziraphale paused, watched when Pepper turned miserably to Crowley and thought of a day many years ago when Crowley stood before Noah's Arc and said;

  
_'Not kids...you can't kill kids...'_

Later that week Pepper would stumble upon a cardboard box with a decidedly haggard looking black kitten inside mewing it's little head off. She would go on to name him 'Waffles', after the first thing she'd found in the kitchen to feed him, and Waffles would find himself to live decidedly longer than the average tomcat with a lucky streak wide enough to drive a bus through.


End file.
